Best Flight Planner

[bjablonka8120 29]

Hi, I know this topic has been brought up many times but I am wondering if there is anything new out there which I am missing. I am looking for a good flight planner which exports the flight plans directly into the fmc (via co routes etc). I tried littlenavmap, simbrief and  pfpx (1&2) but they are not complete. Is there another program out there which I can try? I would appreciate any suggestions.

 

Thanks

 

Bernd

[mpw8679 428]

2 minutes ago, bjablonka8120 said:

Hi, I know this topic has been brought up many times but I am wondering if there is anything new out there which I am missing. I am looking for a good flight planner which exports the flight plans directly into the fmc (via co routes etc). I tried littlenavmap, simbrief and  pfpx (1&2) but they are not complete. Is there another program out there which I can try? I would appreciate any suggestions.

 

Thanks

 

Bernd

Simbrief is hard to beat.

[beechcaptain 105]

I'm not sure what you are expecting, especially when you say Simbrief and PFPX are not complete. AFAIK these 2 are the best of all of the available planners.

[Bigt 192]

5 minutes ago, beechcaptain said:

I'm not sure what you are expecting, especially when you say Simbrief and PFPX are not complete. AFAIK these 2 are the best of all of the available planners.

You beat me to it. OP, if Simbrief and PFPX don't cut it for you, I'm not sure what will.

[Langyboy63 22]

Simbrief for me, use to use Flight Sim Commander as cheaper alternative to PFPX, but simbrief, Skyvector will work well and I use a FSmovemap on my tablet to follow the flight in real time.

[qqwertz 779]

I would say PFPX is as complete as it gets, but not very convenient. Simbrief is the best mix for me. You could also have a look at

Plan G (http://www.tasoftware.co.uk), in particular for VFR

Vroute (https://www.vroute.net), which is convenient for Vatsim flights 

Aivlasoft's EFB (https://www.aivlasoft.com), more like an EFB as the name says, but one can use it to plan a flight as well

FSBuild (http://www.fsbuild.com), which is quite a bit older, but had an excellent reputation back then. I used it in the past, but I was too inexperienced to appreciate it at the time.

Peter

[David Vega 348]

3 hours ago, bjablonka8120 said:

but they are not complete

OP, would you elaborate on what you mean by "they are not complete"?  What's missing from them that you need?  

[Tony P 160]

Simbrief +1

[FlyBaby 659]

Does anyone recommend XPFlightPlanner?

https://www.xpflightplanner.com/

[Langyboy63 22]

We would if this was the Xplane Forum.

[jcomm 5,908]

Probably PFPX, just upgraded to v2.03 ( for free for existing users ), but SimBrief looks very good too!

I use both with Aerowinx PSX, the 747-400 flight simulator...

[Pat Mussotte 92]

Simbrief is not complete? Is it a joke? Simbrief is the most professional flight planner available and is, icing on the cake, free. Via the simbrief downloader your flightplan is imported in many format, for most of the airliners used in P3D/FSX/Xplane. On the PDF you can download, you get all the informations, not only your flightplan but also the weather and the Notams(Of no use in our sims). 

Regards

Pat

Edited December 11, 2018 by Pat Mussotte

[skelsey 765]

Personally:

PFPX is excellent for messing around with routes and I like it for long-haul flight planning where I need to generate a route from scratch.

However, Simbrief's OFP output formats are much more realistic, with much less faffing around in terms of aircraft performance profiles etc and highly accurate results (I've compared Simbrief plans to real OFPs and often the fuel burn figures are within a few hundred kg).

It's also web-based so you can do your planning from any device with an Internet browser, you don't have to pay for a server subscription for weather, NOTAMs and NAT tracks, it exports to all the formats you could want and the new downloader is very convenient. It can also be integrated in to third-party websites (VAs etc) with all sorts of very cool features, and I've found Derek the developer very willing to assist in adding new features and hooks for developers. For instance, our Simfest Dispatch Centre uses a custom Simbrief integration with PSX BACARS to collect taxi time and contingency fuel statistics which we are able to automatically pass to Simbrief to provide automatic average taxi time and statistical contingency fuel figures -- which Derek in turn has provided the ability for us to place data on the OFP etc.

That said, Simbrief's limitation is that the route that pops up when you type in a city pair is just the last route that someone used between those airports. This means that depending on who last used it, you may get a perfect CFMU-validated route or you may get a bag of nonsense -- you just have to apply some common sense (and the tools are there to validate and/or generate a new route if you so desire). Personally this doesn't bother me for short haul stuff as I always just paste in the real-world route. For long-haul where the real world route varies from day to day I often plan the route in PFPX, then paste the route string in to Simbrief for the paperwork...

[rlashier 93]

Agree with all here that Simbrief is an excellent web based and free service that does so much of flight planning so well. As for the noted issue of the last used flight plan being the one you get (even if not ideal), it's pretty easy to load up Flightaware and see what routes are used by the airlines and real world pilots between two cities.

Rich

[mwilk 1,106]

21 minutes ago, rlashier said:

Agree with all here that Simbrief is an excellent web based and free service that does so much of flight planning so well. As for the noted issue of the last used flight plan being the one you get (even if not ideal), it's pretty easy to load up Flightaware and see what routes are used by the airlines and real world pilots between two cities.

Rich

That's true for US based flights and I believe Australia. Flightaware doesn't list routings for flights in Europe.